Paul Brunton - A Search in Secret India: The Classic Work on Seeking a Guru

CONTENTS

I journeyed Eastwards in search of the Yogis I wandered along the banks of Indias holy rivers in this quest. I circled the country. India took me to her heart

Paul Brunton was one of the twentieth centurys greatest explorers of the spiritual traditions of the East. He was also a journalist with a healthy regard for critical impartiality and for commonsense. These characteristics, together with a rich inner life, made him a superb writer on the spirituality of the Orient.

A Search in Secret India is one of the great classics of spiritual travel writing. With a keen eye for detail combined with a generosity of view, Paul Brunton describes taking a circular journey round India: living amongst yogis, mystics and gurus, seeking the one who would give him the peace and tranquillity that come with self-knowledge.

His vividly told search ends at Arunachala, with Sri Ramana Maharshi: The indigo sky is strewn with stars, which cluster in countless thousands close over our heads. The rising moon is a thin crescent disc of silver light. On our left the evening fireflies are making the compound grove radiant, and above them the plumed heads of tall palms stand out in black silhouette against the sky. My adventure in self-metamorphosis is over

Born in 1898, Paul Brunton travelled extensively in the East and published thirteen books between 1935 and 1952. He is generally recognized as having introduced yoga and meditation to the West, and for presenting their philosophical background in nontechnical language. He died in Switzerland (where he lived for 20 years) in 1981.

THE SECRET PATH

A SEARCH IN SECRET EGYPT

A MESSAGE FROM ARUNACHALA

A HERMIT IN THE HIMALAYAS

THE QUEST FOR THE OVERSELF

THE INNER REALITY

THE HIDDEN TEACHING BEYOND YOGA

THE WISDOM OF THE OVERSELF

THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF MAN

THE NOTEBOOKS OF PAUL BRUNTON
(in sixteen volumes)

ESSAYS ON THE QUEST

MEDITATIONS FOR PEOPLE IN CHARGE

MEDITATIONS FOR PEOPLE IN CRISIS

WHAT IS KARMA?

Paul Brunton was surely one of the finest mystical flowers to grow on the wasteland of our secular civilization. What he has to say is important to us all. Georg Feuerstein

a great gift to us Westerners who are seeking the spiritual. Charles T. Tart

A person of rare intelligence thoroughly alive, and whole in the most significant, holy sense of the word. Yoga Journal

Paul Brunton was a great original and got to a place of personal evolution that illumines the pathways of a future humanity. Jean Houston

A simple, straightforward guide to how philosophical insights of the East and West can help to create beauty, joy, and meaning in our lives His keynote is balance, and his uplifting message encompasses all phases of human experience. East West Journal

sensible and compelling. His work can stand beside that of such East-West bridges as Merton, Huxley, Suzuki, Watts, and Radhakrishnan. It should appeal to anyone concerned personally and academically with issues of spirituality. Choice

Any serious man or woman in search of spiritual ideas will find a surprising challenge and an authentic source of inspiration and intellectual nourishment in the writings of Paul Brunton. Jacob Needleman

It is to the likes of Brunton, Vivekananda, and A.E. Burt that I bow in gratitude for early initiations. Stephen Levine

From the early days of the twentieth century, Paul Brunton journeyed across the major continents in search of people of high spiritual attainment, regardless of tradition. He travelled by boat, on horseback or donkey or camel and on foot, lugged heavy trunks with pack animals or bearers without the conveniences, accommodation, places to eat, and modes of communication that make travelling abroad the relatively simple task it is today.

Like the geographers before him, Paul Brunton contributed to a new and vitally important mapping of the world a map of the spirit, of the greater and small traditions, and of their leaders. When now we set forth for Karnak, Delhi or Dharamsala, we have some foreknowledge and familiarity with what we will find, and what we may hope to contact with our hearts through such journeys.

During his journeys, Paul Brunton (P.B. to his friends) met many types of people associated with formal and informal spiritual traditions. Some were sincere, some merely professional; some were out-and-out fakes, and some were authentic in their accomplishments. How can one tell them apart? And, upon the occasion of finding an individual of genuine spiritual insight, how can one determine if that person is to be ones own teacher? These questions arise again and again along our spiritual journey. Sometimes we will believe that they have been answered once and for all; sometimes we may believe that they can never be answered. The reality lies somewhere in between for most questers.

In A Search in Secret India, P.B. has accomplished two tasks at once. First, he has chronicled part of his own spiritual journey; second, he has organized the encounters in this book to stand as true examples which help us answer the aforementioned questions.

As to his own journey, P.B. began following the inward trail to wisdom somewhere in his teens; by the time of the travels chronicled in A Search in Secret India (1931), he was already an accomplished meditator and student of what were then considered the exotic ideas of the East. Although there was much still to learn, at least he knew what he was looking for and that he must look for it. What he found changed his own life, and opened India to the West at the same time. Within a few years of its publication in 1934, Secret India had sold a quarter of a million copies, and made the names of Ramana Maharshi and Shankaracarya famous throughout the global spiritual community.

When read as such, Secret India is certainly an interesting book, capturing much of the flavour of pre-war India, and telling us a little of Bruntons own journey. However, it is much more than that. It is a careful and vitally important parable of the quest itself. P.B. tells us how to look for teachers, and how to find them; he shows us the difference between the religious, the magical and the spiritual. Finally, he reveals the means by which one may recognize and be recognized by ones own spiritual guide. This is the real secret of Secret India, and it is as helpful today as it was when P.B. first put pen to paper, all those years ago.

We hope you will be inspired and assisted by your study of this book and, like P.B., we wish to dedicate this edition to those great lights of twentieth-century India: Ramana Maharshi and Shankaracarya of Kanchipuram.

Timothy Smith

Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation

For information about Paul Brunton, his writings, and the latest publications based on his work, visit http://www.paulbrunton.org. For reviews, excerpts and a complete detailed table of contents of his posthumously published The Notebooks of Paul Brunton and other works, visit http://www.larsonpublications.com.

You can also receive information by e-mail from , or by mail from the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation, 4936 NYS Route 414, Burdett, New York 14818, USA.